Below is what I copied from another tennis forum, which I found interesting.

"Open" book excerpts.

Agassi hints he tanked games. "Losing on purpose isn't easy," he writes. "You have to lose in such a way that the crowd can't tell, and in a way that you can't tell. Your mind is tanking, but your body is fighting on. ... You don't do those tiny things you need to do. You don't run the extra few feet, you don't lunge. You're slow to come out of stops. You hesitate to bend or dig." Of losing in the semifinals of the 1996 Australian Open against Michael Chang -- a match Agassi suggests he tanked -- he writes, "I'm glad I lost."

He describes rival Pete Sampras as one-dimensional, "robotic" and a bad tipper, recalling a time Sampras gave a Palm Springs car valet one dollar. On the other hand, Agassi is grateful to have had Sampras' greatness to measure himself against. "Losing to Pete has caused me enormous pain," he writes, "but in the long run it's also made me more resilient. If I'd beaten Pete more often ... I'd have a better record ... but I'd be less.

He saves no love for Jimmy Connors, whom he calls a "rude, condescending, egomaniac *****." Of Connors' coaching Andy Roddick for a time, he writes, "Poor Andy."

He was incensed that Chang would point to the sky every time he won a match. "He thanks God -- credits God -- for the win, which offends me. That God should take sides in a tennis match, that God should side against me ... feels ludicrous and insulting."

He says Todd Martin was, "like me, an underachiever."

And, perhaps the most shocking revelation of all: Beginning in 1999, he says, he never played wearing underwear again.

RagingLamb

11-06-2009, 08:15 PM

This has already been posted in the various agassi threads on the topic. Please use those threads to continue this discussion.